Why can't I write to my external NTFS hard drive, even though my permissions are set?

Question

On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with a 500GB external WD Hard Drive.

After formatting to NTFS, I can not write files using the graphical Files explorer, I get the pop up error seen below:

Pop up error copying files:

I've tried the following:

$ sudo apt-get purge ntfs-3g
$ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

This reinstalled the ntfs-3g tools. Great, but I still can't do anything. Here's the out put of ls -al /media, sudo fdisk -l and cat /etc/fstab

$ ls -al /media

drwxrwxrwx   1 kf   kf   4096 May 14 14:09 ntfs

$ sudo fdisk -l 

Disk /dev/sdc: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: FB6876F3-56D8-49CD-B0BB-55B07240A75B

Device      Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdc1      40    409639    409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sdc2  411648 976773134 976361487 465.6G Microsoft basic data

$ cat /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name  devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=08fdc860-fb67-4527-bf63-5114d08f16f4 /boot           ext2    defaults        0       2
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=8CA6-E334  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
#/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-swap_1 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sdc2 /media/ntfs ntfs-3g locale=en_US.UTF-8,permissions 0 0

I've gone through all the other posts here on AskUbuntu about this issue, but nothing has helped. Where do I go next?

Answer 1

I believe you have to remount the partition/disk in read/write mode. I had same problems with one of newly created partitions. Try

sudo mount -o remount,rw /PartitionID /MountPoint

Enter the right PartitionID and MountPoint.

Answer 2

After a lot of attempt I solved the issue this way:

sudo mount -o remount,rw /PartitionID /MountPoint

you can find the partitionID with command sudo fdisk -l. The id looks like some random number. And MountPoint is the location of your drive. Usually resides in /media/user_name/. Even if after that you can't write, you might need to change the permission of writing using chmod sudo chmod u+w myfolder.

Answer 3

I had the same issue, I fixed it with:

ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

Replace sdb1 with your partition's ID.